Globalization and Animal Law

The rise of the globalized economy has rendered an even more profound change in the relationship between humans and other animals than the ancient progression from hunter-gatherer to agricultural society. In today's global markets, multinational corporations exploit the economic value of animals throughout the world on an unprecedented scale. Many humans today do not even make their own choices about what they eat and buy; those choices are made by the global marketing machine that "packages" their food and the other products they purchase. The philosophical and legal notions that animals are mere unfeeling machines or pieces of property, although more or less taken for granted for centuries, has been challenged in recent decades (in law, moral philosophy, and cognitive and other sciences), and regulation of the treatment of animals in agriculture, experimentation, and entertainment has begun to make substantial inroads in national and international law. To a large extent this new found awareness comes from the moral repugnance we often experience as we learn the facts of modern food production, experimentation and entertainment practices involving animals - facts the popular media seldom mention. This book provides the first analysis of international and comparative animal law which focuses on the impact of today's globalized economy on animal law. Describing a wide range of individual domestic and international laws relating to the treatment of animals, the author clearly explicates the kinds of rules which affect the global animal marketplace. Representative norms in existing animal protection laws are analyzed and critiqued, along with laws that are illustrative of diverse approaches taken by different countries and by the international community to regulate the uses of animals. Among the issues covered are the following: contemporary philosophical thought on the relationship between humans and animals; recent scientific research relating to cognitive and other abilities of animals; legal issues relating to factory farming and animal slaughter operations; legal protection of animals during transport; regulatory schemes on animal experimentation; laws on the use of animals in entertainment; regulation of trade in endangered species; international trade issues, including the provisions of GATT relevant to animal protection and the seminal WTO/GATT decisions in the Tuna/Dolphin and Shrimp/Turtle cases; constitutional protection for the interests of animals; and what the future may hold for animal law in the global economy. To ensure the consideration of a full range of legal approaches, the laws analyzed come from a wide variety of countries, including the US, the UK, New Zealand, Germany, Sweden, India, Canada, Australia, and Austria, as well as the EU. Numerous international treaties and conventions relevant to animal treatment are also covered, including the CITES Convention and the GATT Treaty. It is not difficult to grasp, given the continuing increases in production, consumption and use of animals and animal products worldwide, that legal initiatives in this often emotional and acrimonious area of law are frequently contentious and hard fought. But this is really just the dawn of animal law, which has only recently become recognized as an important cutting edge topic, and this area of the law promises to develop rapidly in the future. This book is enormously valuable in contributing to the continuing development and understanding of this law, clearly laying out the contours and boundaries of existing animal laws in our global economy and opening the field for concerned lawyers and policymakers to formulate proposals, cases, and defenses, and secure a firm purchase on future trends and developments in animal law.